Psybertron Asks

Suw Charman’s Headshift blog post and comment thread seems to have become the focus for fallout from BlogWalk4.

Quote from Julian Elve
I mostly agree with the view that “it” is about the soft issues and not the technology but that is a little bit countered by my experience that unless the technology hurdle is very very low then it becomes a great hook for people to hang their other issues on.
Enquote

I think this is the essence … technology and communication hurdles are at an alltime low – almost by definition they get lower over time anyway. It’s like the “draining the swamp” metaphor, as the level comes down, the real underlying anthropological issues are exposed. Any “new” technology like blogging, initially raises a learning curve barrier, but as soon as that is overcome, the underlying issues are exposed even more quickly, because so many of the other ubiquitous web technologies have already largely drained the swamp.

As Julian says, think of the latest technology “thing” as the hook on which the (real) human issues are hung – was ever thus, will ever be so.

Reading Mary Midgley’s “Myths We Live By” at the moment, having originally picked up on a review of it way back here.

Easy read, starts promising – mainly against misplaced narrow (physical) scientific views being adopted in human scale situations, and plenty of arguments against dualism and Descartes naturally. Tendency to return to “people are people”, with many aspects, no fundamental view. OK, but what next ?

She takes a very narrow “atomist” view of memetics, and a very literal view of Darwinian evolution, and proceeds to trash widespread adoption of these two fashionable viewpoints for explaining any and all human development. None too convincing for me; she seems to choose very narrow definitions when it suits her argument. She’s no fan of Dawkins, but then neither am I.

OK, so memes are not “fundamental” particles of culture, but then neither are genes quite as fundamentally distinct as recent science would have us believe. (She focusses on the discredited linguistic “phoneme” origin of the word, rather than the “gene” metaphor for some reason. She dimsisses Susan Blackmore, having Buddhist tendencies, as clearly unsound.) But memes are useful components to model with. OK, so the human world is not literally built of memes in any simple additive sense, they are assemblies with topological arrangements and relationships in time. Memes themselves compound, overlap and decompose into components, and yes some of the components may be indistinct and conceptual.

Similarly the evolution metaphor, she’s hung up on the narrow chance survival of the fittest view, with a very narrow view of “fit”, which should really be taken to mean fit with the environment. OK so in human affairs, there is a large human intentional and contingent element to the “chance” of survival and reproduction, with some control over the delivery and the environment. If you take the environment and agents into account, it still forms a very useful model. I think Midgley is perhaps missing her own argument. There may be nothing fundamental / metaphysical about memes and evolution, but who’s looking for that anyway ? They form a useful predictive and explanatory model, provided you hang all the relevant issues on them, and don’t take too narrow a view.

Her main theme is preaching against simplistic all-explaining views; things generally being more complex than that. OK, I’m with her there. I’m only half-way through; I’m hoping later on I’ll find she has something to say about complexity and the emergence of simple metaphors.

I also feel “Gaia” coming on ? I’ll be back.

Brian McDermott’s weblog looks interesting. Came across it from a cross-hit on his page of knowledge related quotes. I know – cliche – but some good ones.

Not sure whether these guys independently verified this stuff, but my Pirsig Timeline forms the basis of the biography of Robert Pirsig on the web site of the American Society of Authors and Writers.

Says Johnnie Moore, quoting Peter Block’s book title.

The antidote to Analysis-Paralysis is Can-Do / Just-Do-It.

Spookily the instant after returning from commenting on Johnnie’s blog, I found a hit on my own blog with the search string “How can knowledge be shared in weblog“. Answer = Yes, you dummy.

Sad day yesterday. Ironicaly, we were just talking about how well Cloughie was looking recently when watching his player/manager son Nigel at Burton Albion; I guess his chronic illness enforced healthier living in recent years. He’ll be missed.

John Udell quoting Ray Ozzie about what we must all recognise as situation normal these days; Having better (more flexible) tools on our domestic PC than on an IT Dept controlled work PC, and the flexibility of being able to transfer results between machines via USB Memory Drives. We all do it.

Planning & control are anathema to progress. [See here][and here][and …]

A variation on fractals, these are strange attractor images. [via Apothecary]

Also via Apothecary – the Watermelon carving story. Now I geddit.

Send us your money and we’ll save the world. Hmmmmmm says Rivets. Weird.